On weekends Ed was Easter Valiant, white gown, white wig, quasi-operatic vocals. Each year, in May, he performed one of his mother's albums in its entirety. This year it was her 1973 hit album Gee Golly, which kicked off with the title track, and as he sang the opening line—“There’s no need to be frightened / We know enough to let the light in”—he resented, as he had as a child, the veneer of cheerfulness that characterized the song and the record that followed. As he sang, though, he recognized that it was precisely that quality that had given the album its universal appeal, and he foresuffered the dread he would feel the following year, when he was scheduled to sing Same For Me, her 1975 follow-up, an album of pinched, prideful convolutions that rarely strayed beyond the boundaries of her own diminished talents.
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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